Back to London for the city’s mayoral elections – and the verdict is in. In a win for Labour, Sadiq Khan has been hailed as victor for an unprecedented third term with an increased vote share of 44 per cent, while the Conservative’s Susan Hall has been relegated to second place with a 33 per cent vote share. While Tory MP and former aspiring mayoral candidate Paul Scully criticises his party for running an ‘incredibly underwhelming’ and ‘anti-Khan’ campaign, the Labour mayor will be feeling rather smug today with a swing from the Conservatives to Labour of 3.2 per cent.
Will Khan’s third win mark the beginning of a new dawn for London? Call Steerpike a cynic, but the city’s rather long list of problems seems to have only grown longer under the Labour mayor’s tenure. Certainly his victory is as good a chance as any to explore the lowlights of his time in office so far…
An unwelcome expansion
The thorn in Khan’s side, the London mayor’s hamartia, is his love for Ulez – and, specifically, for expanding it. In August last year, Khan extended London’s ultra-low emission zone to an area 18 times larger than what it had been before, affecting approximately five million more Londoners who were forced to drive compliant cars or face fines. Initially covering an area of London bounded by the North and South circular roads, the zone extended to encompass all 32 of London’s boroughs – an unpopular move with outer city dwellers. The policy saw protests sweep through the city and multiple social media groups organising to destroy Ulez cameras. Oh dear.
Khan called the decision the ‘best ever two-for-one offer’ for Londoners, to tackle both air pollution and climate change, but it rather backfired on Sir Keir Starmer’s party, which lost the by-election for Boris Johnson’s former constituency, Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Khan says this time he won’t extend the scheme further – but not everyone is convinced. Hall, his rival for the mayoralty, branded him ‘dishonest’, saying: ‘Sadiq Khan said he wouldn’t expand Ulez at the last election, then went ahead and did the opposite.’ Will the Labour mayor U-turn on his traffic plans? Watch this space…
Lame London
Not only has Khan upset London’s drivers, he’s left socialites everywhere despairing at the city’s rather dreary nightlife scene. From bars that announce last orders before 10pm to deserted restaurants in the centre of town, under Khan ‘London is the city that likes to go to bed early with a cup of Horlicks’, as one Times Radio presenter aptly put it.
And to make matters worse, Steerpike revealed earlier this year that the London mayor has been paying a DJ a starting six-figure sum to be the city’s ‘night czar’. Amy Lamé earns £120,000 a year to protect London’s nighttime economy. And if Lamé understands ‘protect’ to mean ‘pulverise’, well, she’s actually doing a rather good job. Since she was first installed in 2016, the capital has lost almost half of its nightclubs while the city’s nightlife venues close at a faster rate than in most other UK cities. So fed up with the underwhelming night czar, London’s residents have taken to social media to post their #LameLondon snaps, while she even received complaints from the Tories about whether she’d breached rules on political impartiality online. Amy Lamé has a claim to being Sadiq Khan’s worst mistake in office – which is really saying something.
The trouble with the TfL
London’s transport system might have been hit with incessant strikes, frequent delays and regular cancellations, but never fear, Khan has a solution: rename the tube lines. Yes, that’s right – instead of bothering to sort the more pressing problems faced by the Transport for London (TfL), in February the London mayor unveiled plans to bestow six parts of the Overground with brand new, right-on names – and all freshly colour-coded. At least someone’s got their eye on the important stuff.
His TfL apparatchiks announced that the new lines will include the Lioness line; the Mildmay line; the Windrush line; the Weaver line; the Suffragette; and the Liberty line. Today’s virtue-signalling victor previously declared that the move was about ‘honouring and celebrating different parts of London’s unique local history and culture’. How admirable. If you call the trains nice things will they run on time too?
A criminal matter
Figures from the start of the year suggest that knife crime in London is rising at the fastest rate in five years while knife-point muggings have shot up by over a third. Previously quizzed on what was going wrong, Khan was quick to resort to his usual buzzwords, telling Sky News interviewer Mark Austin that he was confident in his ‘public health’ approach. Then, plucking a tactic straight from the devolution rulebook, the London mayor pointed the finger at the Westminster government’s national policies and bemoaned a lack of funds in public services. But his case didn’t quite stack up when Austin pointed out that in other parts of the country – like Greater Manchester – the rates of these types of crimes were going down. Ever the creative, Khan changed tack to blame, er, phone manufacturers instead. Maybe this term he’ll come up with better answers…
Watch the clip here:
Polemics over progress
And of course, Khan wouldn’t be a true Labour lefty without harping on about, you guessed it, climate change. And this London mayor has taken his green scheme preaching to a whole new level. Not content with expanding Ulez to outer London boroughs, the re-elected politician has now written a polemic on climate change, titled: ‘Breathe: Seven Ways to Win a Greener World.’ Its blurb on Amazon reads: ‘He offers a playbook for anyone – voter, activist or politician – who wants to win the argument on the environment.’ Win the argument?! Mr S isn’t quite sure the London mayor has got that far (see point one!). Now he’s proven he can churn out a book, if only he could apply as much focus to fixing crises in London, like the fact that he’s only 2.8 per cent of the way through his affordable home building target, or that at the end of last year 1 in 50 people in his city were homeless…
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